“Neotenic” is a video recording composed of several hundreds of drawing realised by watercolour technique. The woman’s movements whose overweight body recalls those of Willendorf’s Venus, faithfully reproduce a baby’s movements who is learning to keep an upright position and attempts to walk. The little boy I was inspired by is one amongst the many shot mothers on the four corners of the world, uploaded on youtube.

Neoteny is a term defining the perpetuation of childhood features in adult individuals which philosophers and sociologists, such as the Italian Paolo Virno, sustains that the chronic infant, that is to say, never achieves a stage by which he is to be considered definitive, but continuously behaves under a redefinition due to his lack of specialized instincts which other animals are supply with. Thus, it is the comparison with other animals what makes it possible to refer to human being as the most incomplete and non-adapted amongst the terrestrial creatures. The other animals live in their environment as though using a prosthesis, knowing quite well what to do about it; the human being does not live in such rigid spheres and his vital habitat is the world where he develops an essential existential experience, namely, learning. Chronic infancy is a natural state of the human animal, and every society of any age has attempted to moderate by rite-like repetitive devices, along with work engagement which does not plainly expose it. In a contemporary society what prevail is processes that expose this neotenous structure, with its features of intermittence and precariousness, flexibility and uninterrupted development.